Slowly lifting her eyelids, Maggie accepted the applause her perfectly delicate singing deserved and, smiling at Cormac, returned to the table. It was impossible to hear what she said to him as the musicians struck up a syncopated tune. But Cormac replied by squeezing her hand across the small table and gazing intently into her eyes.
Certain she did not wish to witness any more of this, Liz made a hasty exit from Tir Na Nog, missing the chance to observe the redhead turn, a moment later, to give an open-mouthed kiss to a bearded musician who tapped her on the shoulder. Turning around, himself, to look for Liz, Cormac’s face fell as he realized she was out of sight. As he wove through the crowd looking for her, his expression changed. Realizing his actions must matter to Liz, he began to smile. Returning to his table he said to Maggie and her man, “Congratulations on your engagement!”
There was still the question of forensic news, Liz realized as she drove to Gravesend Street in silence. It remained unclear if Cormac had planned to share more information with her. Well, her e-mail message to him would serve to remind the doctor of that. If it wasn’t going to be a personally satisfying evening tonight, at least it would have been useful to have the forensics information to use on Christmas Day, when she was scheduled to work. Otherwise, she might be sent on another fresh-killed goose chase.
As she approached an all-night store lit up and open even on Christmas Eve, Liz pulled into the nearby parking lot and went in to purchase milk, eggs, and cheddar cheese. On the rack near the cash register, she saw new stacks of newspapers, delivered early for Christmas Day. Probably, the drivers had worked as fast as they could to get them delivered so they could get home to their families. Liz picked up copies of the
Back at Gravesend Street, she turned on her Christmas tree lights, lit her fireplace, and whipped up a souffle. Relaxing in her chair with a glass of mead while Elizabethan lute music played on her CD player, she took a look at the newspapers while the dish baked.
The
On the same page, a small item ran under the headline, “TEACUP PUZZLER,” and the Manning byline. “A teacup found in missing mom Ellen Johansson’s kitchen sink may have held no liquid. But, according to Newton Police Chief Anthony Warner, it contained plenty of inconclusive evidence. ‘The prints on it belong to Mrs. Johansson and two additional unidentified individuals,’ Warner said. ‘It’s unusual to find numerous prints inside and out like this on a drinking cup. But without matches for the other prints, we can’t draw any conclusions here.’
“When Johansson, 34, disappeared December 18, leaving her kitchen full of cookie ingredients splattered with blood, a matching teacup was left on a side table in the living room. The discovery of the teacup in the sink has led police to speculate Johansson was interrupted in serving tea to someone known to her on the afternoon she went missing. ‘We found no evidence of forced entry,’ Warner said, in a December 18 interview.”
Setting down the
Calling to mind her conversation over tea at Ellen’s house, Liz remembered how Veronica had interrupted it by dropping the teacup. And she remembered, too, her quick glance into the Johansson dining room on the day Ellen disappeared.
Just then, the timer rang and she paused in her thinking to take a perfectly formed souffle out of her oven. She sliced a tomato over a few spinach leaves, then cut into the souffle, causing it to collapse with a small sigh, and placed some on her plate. Before taking her late-night dinner to her table, she put some of Prudence’s favorite canned food into a clean dish and set it down for her.
Only then did Liz raise her glass to Prudence and say, “Forget-me-not!”
Liz knew the hastily written words on Ellen’s blackboard were no farewell message. They were just the name of the china pattern. When Veronica dropped her cup, it must have cracked or chipped. That was why there was a saucer lacking a cup in Ellen’s china cabinet. The replacement, which most likely was purchased in Florissa’s Gift Emporium in New York, had been sitting in Ellen’s sink. Any fingerprints inside it were less likely to belong to an intruder in the kitchen than to Ellen, a shop clerk, and perhaps Nadia.
The shop would never be open at this hour, and it would almost certainly be closed on Christmas, but Liz remained eager to know when it would open again so she could ask about the sale of a single teacup. She dialed the number on the gift emporium’s business card and listened to the message—with a music box tune tinkling tinnily in the background—which informed her the shop would reopen December 26.
That meant she could not write a follow-up story about this on Christmas Day and would be stuck covering whatever struck the city editor’s fancy. Unless she found another promising avenue of investigation.
While washing her dishes by hand, Liz let her thoughts flow freely. Just as the “FORGET ME NOT” message meant something different than it first suggested, so must some of the other evidence in this case have been misread. It was time to look at other pieces of information with fresh eyes.
It was nearly 1:00 a.m. when Liz stepped away from her sink and into her bathroom. Stepping out of her clothes, she showered and washed her hair. Then she took out her vial of Fijian coconut oil and slowly spread it all over her body. It would spot her sheets, but they were old anyway, and the pleasure of slicking her skin with oil from two hemispheres different from her own—the eastern and the southern—was too good to resist.
Slipping between her sheets, Liz turned out her lamp and let her gaze linger on the glowing Christmas tree. Finally, she got up and turned the tree lights out. Back in bed, she lay quietly, wondering,
