Escape Artist

“Maybe not. Frana could be in Milwaukee as we speak.”

“I can see Frana lying to her.”

“Because Kathe would believe her.”

“You know, Frana is up to something bad.”

“And Kathe is involved somehow. But I don’t understand how Frana mastered leaving the school unseen, not with Miss Hepplewhyte sitting there. Was that the only way she could get away from her uncle’s eagle eye?”

“She was a prisoner at home,” Esther insisted. “They put bars on her bedroom window. They watched her.”

“How’d you first hear of that?”

“Kathe was happy to tell me.”

“So she obviously saw her chance to flee only during school hours…”

Esther looked puzzled. “Why go to such lengths to get out of school unseen?”

“Meeting up with someone,” I concluded. “But she must have known there’d be a price to be paid later on…a beating, more confinement.”

“Unless she wasn’t planning on going home again.”

My mind was racing. “Then maybe she did get on that train.”

“The chief will find her.”

“But where is she? Frankly, I never thought she was that clever to do something like this.” I bit my lip. “Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless someone told her to do it.”

Esther nodded. “The lover.”

“Yes, the lover.”

“But where are they now?”

I clicked my tongue. “Not in a honeymoon Pullman suite, I’d hazard a guess.” A pause. “She’d-they’d-know everyone would look on that train right away.”

“So…”

“So she’d be hiding out in Appleton.”

“Until…”

“Until she can escape.”

“How?”

“Maybe a boat. Catching the Goodrich Line tonight at eight o’clock. From the dock on Sycamore.” In my mind I ran through the possible ways to escape Appleton.

“But the chief will be watching that boat, no?”

“I’d hope so.”

“So long as he doesn’t assign Amos Moss to keep an eye on it.”

“Then Frana can blithely sail up the Fox River, arm and arm with her paramour, waving goodbye to Appleton.”

“Paramour-I love that word,” Esther laughed.

We strolled casually back home, enjoying the idle speculation, gossiping, fascinated with our pretty little schoolmate who now had made herself the subject of discussion. Frana, the girl who never left home without a mirror, now talked of, sought, condemned, hiding somewhere, perhaps by the river or in the mill district. Somewhere. Perversely, I was wondering how I might make it an item in the Crescent, though I realized it was hardly news. Sam Ryan never allowed tidbits of scandal or idle sensation, no matter how scintillating, to pop up in his serious columns. Frana Lempke disappeared on a riverboat with Chester Smedjen, salesman from Minah Malleable Iron Fittings Company.

I was itching to jot down notes in my pad, to describe the scene at the high school.

“I feel sorry for her when she’s found,” Esther whispered.

“If she lets herself be found.”

The next morning I woke to the sound of rain beating down on the roof, and I snuggled under the covers. It would be a drifting Saturday, a chance for me to read the F. Marion Crawford romance I’d picked up at the library. For a moment, lying there, I thought of Frana Lempke, disappeared from town. Or had she? Downstairs Fannie was complaining about the rain. There would be no beating of carpets and Kathe Schmidt would simply not show up, most likely overjoyed at not having to help the Ferbers. I’d forgotten the day’s intended chore; I’d have to help, too, working with Kathe, doubtless the two of us ending up in a verbal skirmish.

By midday the rains were worse and my mother returned from My Store for dinner.

“Everyone comes into the store and talks of Frana,” my mother told me. “But everyone thinks it’s…amusing. Like it’s a foolish little-girl adventure.”

“Well, Frana can be a foolish girl.”

“Strangely, her mother stopped into the store just before noon. A nice woman, but not a talker. I asked her about Frana and she just nodded, looked a little embarrassed. You know what I think? Frana came back home last night, and now the family is a little ashamed of the fuss that’s been made.”

“But I wonder just what she’s up to?” Fannie asked.

I kept my mouth shut.

It rained all day, and Fannie sat by the kitchen window, staring out at the empty clothesline. I avoided her, sensing she was ready to do battle.

Sunday morning was bright and clear, and in the early afternoon I wandered to Esther’s house, where we sat on the veranda, sipping coffee and chatting. Later, buoyed by the welcome sun, we took a stroll, drifting in the placid June air, a gorgeous day, the slight breeze rustling the sycamores and sugar maples. We meandered off the Avenue, headed toward the river by way of Lovers Lane, the quiet promenade of overarching elms and birches, with its hard-packed dirt lanes and the rough-hewn fences. There old men walked ancient hounds, college freshmen from Lawrence University rode their fashionable bicycles, and sixteen-year-old girls sat on the moss-backed hillocks under the aromatic white pines and read Ella Wheeler Wilcox verse aloud…

Most of my most fanciful dreams happened when I sat, alone, on the benches there.

We rambled toward the river, my favorite destination, but our ramble was cut short, when, nearby, Old Man Travers, a man in his nineties who periodically drifted into town from his shack in the mud flats and announced that he was the rightful heir to the throne of Slovakia, started making gasping sounds as he pulled at his border collie who was straining on his leash. The animal would have none of it, yipping in counterpoint to the doddering owner. Esther and I stopped, watched, and saw Old Man Travers crumble to his knees, moaning. Panicked, we rushed to help the old man-Don’t die don’t die don’t die-only to discover, as we neared the gasping, choking man, that his faithful border collie Wilhelm was pawing at the body of Frana Lempke.

Chapter Eight

I sat by myself on a bench. Esther’s father had taken her home. I’d refused to leave, my reporter’s instinct taking over, but, more so, I had to grapple with my own dreadful, numbing discovery. I’d never seen a body before and certainly not a murdered body-nor of a person I knew, maybe not a close friend but a school chum. I preferred to sit quietly, thinking, watching, shaking, removed from the frantic men assembled near the dead body. I’d already told Chief Stone my story, which was no story, really, watching Old Man Travers topple and then…the gruesome sight of sad Frana lying there, her fair hair, as light as moonshine, askew about her head. The eyes wide open, startled, yet glassy. The face ashen and contorted, as though she couldn’t believe her life was ending so horribly.

Caleb Stone and Amos Moss strutted around, out of their element, as Dr. Belford, the district coroner, pulled up in the dark-curtained death wagon. A crew of bustling men-ten or more townsmen-circled the body, trampling the scene. Shouldn’t they keep their distance? In the damp spongy mud perhaps a few foot indentations, left behind, might be evidence. Or maybe a bit of clothing, a hair, or…or what? I tried to think of how police or