Front Page Teaser

“They’re coming along. What’s the hurry?”

“We’ve got a goner, now, so the story may go front page. Especially if you’ve got a wham-o shot. Hey, is that a figure behind the flames there?” he asked, scrutinizing the photo now displayed on the computer screen.

“Could be. I think it is.”

“That does it! Print that one pronto. I want it in time for the news meeting.”

“Sure, Dermott. I’ll have it for you ASAP.”

“Have it sooner!” Dermot said, rushing out of the room.

“Yeah, I did get a chance to print the photos—not all of them but enough to get you started, I hope,” Rene said, anticipating Liz’s question. “As you can see, they sent me to a fire scene. Your prints are in my cubbyhole there, in a manila envelope. You won’t find any enlargements of details. There just wasn’t time. I’ll get to the rest as soon as I can.”

“Thanks, Rene. I owe you,” Liz said, and handed him Ellen Johansson’s film.

“That’s true enough!”

“Looks like a woman in the flames there. That’s a great shot, Rene. Upsetting, though.”

“Another case of the camera seeing more than the eye. I just kept shooting. It was only when it came up on the machine that I knew what I had.”

“I’ll let you get to it,” Liz said, collecting the manila envelope from DeZona’s cubby.

“Just so you know, Manning’s hounding the hubby in your Newton case. And the medical examiner thinks the mom may have manipulated the scene.”

“You mean in the kitchen?”

“That’s right.”

“What makes him think that?”

“Manning will explain in tomorrow’s Banner,” Dermott said, standing in the door. “For Chrissake, let DeZona get on with his work! Now what have you got for me on the mystery mavens? Whatever it is, you’d better be able to spell it out in six inches. Between the freakin’ fire and the missing mom case, there’s a squeeze on for space.”

“Six it is!” Liz said. For once, she was relieved to have little space. It would allow her to file her story and head out again. “I’ve got Mary Higgins Clark and a private eye telling mystery fans how they go about their work. You could head it, ‘HOWDUNIT?’”

“We’ll see about that,” the city editor said.

At her desk, Liz took out another granola bar and opened her orange juice. Then she scanned her contact list on ATEX and dialed the Children’s Enrichment Aftercare Program.

“Laura left for the day,” a receptionist informed her. “May I take a message?”

“Isn’t it early for her to leave?”

“It is, actually. But she’s helping out with a child who’s been traumatized.”

“Veronica Johansson?”

“How did you know? And whose mom are you?”

Liz hung up without answering. Then she wrote an unremarkable, six-inch story about the mystery conference. While she was writing, the message “File and fly rule in effect’’ flashed at the top of her screen. She looked out the window. Heavy snow. Marvelous! This meant she could send the story into the system and split. Liz pulled a file photo of Mary Higgins Clark from the Banner’s photo library, turned it in at the city desk, and returned to her desk.

She looked in the West Suburban Boston phone book for Laura Winters in Newton. No Laura there, so she turned to the Boston book. A “Winters, L.” was listed at a Brighton address. Liz noted the address on Summit Street, took down the phone number, then dialed the latter. A perky voice on the phone answering machine invited her to leave a message. It sounded like the daycare provider. Again cursing her lack of a cell phone, Liz left a message with her work and home phone numbers. On impulse, she said she’d be at the Green Briar around 7:00 p.m., and invited Laura to call her there. Then she phoned Veronica’s home. If she didn’t catch Laura Winters there, perhaps Erik Johansson would pick up.

“Hello there! You’ve reached the Johanssons’ voice-mail box. If you’d like to leave a message for Erik, Ellen, or Veronica, go right ahead after the beep,” announced Ellen Johnasson’s recorded voice. Just as though nothing had happened to her.

The cheerful ordinariness of the message stopped Liz cold. She had sipped tea with this woman, even held Ellen’s traumatized child in her arms. But in her quest to grab the front page, she’d offered only cold comfort. Now, miles from their home, she did the best she could to embrace Ellen’s shattered family more warmly.

“I’ll find you, Ellen,” she said after the beep. “I’ll bring you home.”

As she pulled on her coat, she saw a copy of the front page that had been prepared earlier. “A PINCH OF BLOOD,” its headline read. It would never run, since the story had been bumped off Page One by the fire fatality. On an inside page there’d be smaller type and less hype.

And because it would never run, the rejected page was fair game. Liz snatched it up and made a swift exit into a driving snowstorm.

The Banner’s parking lot was normally a litter-strewn expanse of concrete, old- model cars, and newspaper delivery trucks. But now the fast-falling snow softened every angle, transferring this urban eyesore into a winter wonderland. If there had not been a missing mom or fire fatality, Banner headline writers might have been playing with words like “GUARANTEED WHITE,” since this snow would surely stay on the ground until Christmas. Unless Ellen Johansson showed up in the six days remaining before the holiday, the little girl who started out the season finding the area’s best Santa would not find her Christmas to be merry and bright.

Shivering, Liz approached the snow-covered Tracer, unlocked it, and took out her combination windshield scraper and brush. As she pushed snow off the spoiler designed to improve the aerodynamics of her car, she shook her head at the silliness of it. The accessory only made the vehicle look like a clunker that aimed—and failed—at looking sporty.

“Not unlike this reporter,” she thought. “I’d like to be the Banner’s hottest writer, but . . .”

Still, the car made up for its uncool appearance with compact size and reliability. In a city where parking spaces were at a premium, Liz could park the car on a dime. Now, it started up immediately when she turned it on. On the snowbound city streets, it performed just as well as the much more expensive, four-wheel-drive vehicles that shared the roads with her. But, in this snow, would it make it up the hills in Brighton? And when she arrived at the Green Briar, would Kinnaird be there after all? Would the good doctor be so keen on Irish music that he’d brave a blizzard for a chance to play his banjo?

The weather dictated Liz’s next decisions. Traffic was too slow to allow time for a quick stop at home before her Green Briar meeting. So she steered the Tracer to Brighton. The Beatles belted out “You’re Going To Lose That Girl” on her radio as Liz passed Saint Elizabeth’s Hospital. It made a welcome change from the Christmas carols jamming the airwaves. Until Liz thought about the song’s title, that is. Feeling sure Veronica’s mother would not voluntarily abandon her daughter, Liz looked up at the hundreds of illuminated windows and large electrified cross that glowed through the falling snow on the massive hospital complex set high on a hilltop.

Below, traffic was snarled in the complicated intersections of Brighton Center. A Christmas tree lit with multicolored bulbs shared a small traffic island with an antique clock topping a pole like a lollipop. Liz passed the Green Briar, traveling about a half-mile farther west to the base of Summit Street. Finding the road ran one way in the wrong direction, she drove around in the intensifying storm until she found a road that wound around the hill to what she thought was the other end of the one-way street. But it was the wrong road after all, Liz realized, as she pulled out of a skid in time to read “Tip Top Street” on a snowy street sign. Liz recognized the street name but, distracted by the storm, couldn’t recall why. It turned out the well-named street went up one side and down the other of a hill cluttered with quirky houses. With many of the houses lit up in Christmas lights, the effect was like an illustration in a child’s picture book. Descending the hill, and ascending another, Liz at last found Summit Street.

The street was neither plowed nor sanded, so Liz drove at a steady pace to a house on the hillside where, thanks to a porch light, she could make out Laura’s house number. Reasoning that if a snowplow came by, it would