Front Page Teaser

“Don’t take Liz away!” Veronica said, clinging to her.

“I have to go for now, honey,” Liz said, without hurrying to extricate herself.

Wondering when she would gain entree again, Liz scanned the room. She’d been there eight times before, once to have tea with Ellen, once to pick up mother and daughter for the first Santa-seeking foray, and six times more to collect Veronica at the door. Now, while dawdling on the sofa with Veronica clinging to her for comfort, Liz examined her surroundings. Much remained as she remembered it. Numerous bookshelves were packed with women’s fiction, books about explorers and naturalists, some mystery novels, and several memoirs about women who live “under the veil” in the Middle East. Liz remembered making conversation with Ellen about a shelf of older books including Charles Lindbergh’s The Spirit of St. Louis, Beryl Markham’s West with the Night, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, and Susan Glaspell’s A Jury of Her Peers. Ellen had said these volumes were her treasures, since they were signed first editions.

“I’ve read some of these books over and over again,” Ellen had said. “Here I am, a suburban wife and mom. You might expect me to be more interested in Martha Stewart’s decorating books or novels about suburban angst, all of which are hot with our Newton Free Library patrons. But I guess my house is as decorated as it ever will be and I’m too in love with my husband to have a taste for tales of adultery in the suburbs. Picking up The Spirit of St. Louis, she had mused, “I suppose I’m an adventurer at heart, but too comfortable with my husband and daughter to indulge that part of me. Still, did you know, when Charles Lindbergh feared he’d fall asleep at the controls of his plane, he dipped The Spirit of St. Louis so close to the waves of the Atlantic that he could feel sea spray on his face? Now that’s living on the edge!”

“What about the Virginia Woolf?” Liz recalled inquiring.

“On the surface, the Woolf doesn’t seem like it’s in the same category, does it?” Ellen had said. “Mrs. Dalloway is a kind of stay-at-home, isn’t she? But the world comes to her, and when she crosses the road to buy flowers for a dinner party, she’s as intensely alive as Lindbergh was with the sea spray in his face. As for the Susan Glaspell, she has real insight into…”

Thanks to Veronica spilling tea, Ellen never completed her thought on that unfamiliar author. Now Veronica’s current distress allowed Liz to look around the Johanssons’ living room just a little bit longer. Were there any signs of struggle here? No. Nothing seemed to be in disarray. The open book splayed pages-down on an armchair did suggest a reader had been interrupted, especially since there was a bookmark and a half-empty cup of tea on the nearby side table. But this was the house of readers where books were no doubt often left ready to pick up again. Was it fair to assume it was Ellen’s book? The bone china teacup with its delicate pattern looked likely to be chosen by a woman for her drink. What was the title of the open book?

Standing up at the urging of Atwood, Liz could see the book’s title plainly. But Liz could not tell what it said, since it was spelled out in Arabic.

Assuring Veronica she would see her later, Liz crossed the room in the direction of the kitchen. Atwood need not have been on the alert, because as soon as she headed that way, Veronica cried out, “Don’t go in the kitchen!”

As a result, Liz only got as far as the doorway to the dining room, where she noticed the glass door to the built-in china cabinet was slightly ajar. Inside, a set of perfectly lined-up teacups and saucers lacked not just the cup and saucer she saw in the living room but another cup, too. Perhaps if and when Ellen was interrupted in her reading, she had invited her visitor to join her in a cup of tea.

At Atwood’s urging, Liz made her way to the vestibule where she pulled gloves out of her pocket and purposely dropped her keys on the floor. This gave her the chance to stoop down and examine something metallic on the floor next to the umbrella stand. It was a woman’s lipstick. Beside the lipstick lay a dime and an elastic hair band. Liz picked them up. Rising slowly, she looked into the up-ended umbrella in the stand. Sure enough, something had fallen into it, too. Snapping up the scrap of paper, Liz took the coat the youth officer handed her, and made her exit into a suburban front yard that was alive with reporters.

There, World reporter Mick Lichen was reduced to taking down low crime statistics rattled off by a flustered Ficarelli, while television crews zoomed in on neighbors who echoed each other’s sentiments:

“Such a wonderful mother.”

“Great neighbors.”

“How could this happen here?”

Liz hurried as quickly as the icy conditions would allow back to her green Mercury Tracer. As she neared her car, she saw Banner colleague Dick Manning draw up in his retro-fitted Mustang.

“I’ve got this one, Dick,” Liz said, surprising the guy who was as well known for his front-page bylines as he was for his sexual conquests. “If DeZona’s still here, you might get some quotes from neighbors and have Rene shoot their photos. But don’t delay him too much, please. I need to see his kitchen pix.”

As Liz waved goodbye, Dick appeared dumbfounded. Knowing this could not last, Liz could not help gloating as she made the six-mile drive back to Banner Square. It was an unfamiliar and welcome experience.

Chapter 3

Liz fairly flew down the ink-stained hall that led from the reporters’ parking lot to the lobby. While riding the escalator to the newsroom, she peeled off her coat and gloves.

“There you are,” Dermott McCann said, “We were wondering when you’d mosey in.”

“Rene said you gained entree to the premises,” Conneely volunteered.

“How’d you pull that off?” Dermott demanded.

“The girl is the same one who evaluated the Santas for us: Veronica Johansson. When she got scared at home, she must have heard the music from the mayor’s event. When she ran over to get help, I was a familiar face,” Liz explained. “That’s great news Rene’s back. I’ve gotta see his kitchen shots before I write my story. How many inches do I get?”

“Whoa, there, Higgins,” Dermott said. “We’ve gotta wait for Manning to call in before we decide where we’re going with this one.”

“That’s easy,” Liz said. “He’ll need a sidebar. By the time Dick got there, the police had sealed off the house. He’ll have comments from the neighbors and the mayor.”

“We’ll see about that when we hear from Manning. And don’t forget, I’m the guy who decides what goes into a sidebar and what goes into the main here,” Dermott warned. “Meanwhile, show me your stuff in ten inches.”

“Just ten?”

“All right, you can have thirteen. Slug it 10NEWT1 and send it to city-news,” he said, referring to the code that identified stories filed for publication. “Now get a move on.”

Liz hurried across the newsroom to the photo department, where DeZona was cutting negatives on the light box. The Banner’s photographers worked with a combination of old and new equipment, using single-lens reflex cameras that produced negatives for less urgent work and digital cameras for hard news assignments that were likely to require the quickest processing. Never guessing the Newton event would have front-page possibilities, DeZona had shot it with his standard Nikon SLR.

“I can see the headline now,” the photographer said, “‘BLOODY MESS.’”

It was not easy to pick out details in the tiny negatives.

“How soon can you print some of these?” Liz asked, looking at the clock. She had about a half hour to complete her story, less time if she wanted to get a hop on Manning. “Give me twenty minutes. Here, mark the negs you want me to print first. I’ll let you know when I have something.”

“Thanks, Rene,” Liz said, looking through a magnifier at the negatives on the light box and marking a wide view and a close-up of the kitchen counter. “Tell me, did you happen to notice a woman’s handbag in the kitchen?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. My lens often sees things the eyes miss.”

“Thanks, too, for acting like you didn’t know me there.”