Front Page Teaser

Chapter 10

Perhaps because clouds had rolled in as the sun advanced to the horizon, daylight was fading faster than Liz had expected. After the comfort of the warm sitting room, the atmosphere felt raw, too. Those two factors meant Liz would have to adjust her expectations of a leisurely, contemplative stroll. Still, Liz reasoned, without the need to proceed delicately with Mrs. Swenson—conversationally or otherwise—she should be able to retrace her steps before the sun went down entirely.

As the cold easily penetrated her sports leggings, Liz also felt chilled at the prospect of calling in to Dermott to say she had no story to file. Although the day was productive, nothing printable had come of it. And the city editor was bound to think she was not hard-nosed enough when she would have to admit the information she had gathered was confidential.

“No use thinking about that,” Liz decided, picking up her pace. She might as well take this time of forced speed walking and use it as best she could. As she strode on briskly, her eyes naturally traveled to the open surface of the lake, where the scene was best lit.

How did Karl Swenson’s drowning there change Olga’s and Ellen’s enjoyment of their Thursday afternoons? she asked herself. Did it put a damper on their walks, after the incident with Al? Or, since the boy was transferred from the school across the way, did they continue their perambulations and picnics there untroubled in the months before Karl went through the ice?

Perhaps they’d never stopped enjoying the landscape here. To this day, Olga Swenson seemed fond of the Pinetum and topiary garden. What gave her the strength to continue residing on the shore of a body of water that had taken her husband’s life?

If deepening dusk endows rhetorical questions with significance, it serves even better to clothe those who pose them with an air of wisdom. Or so it was for Liz Higgins, walking through the snow along Lake Waban that cold December evening. The farther her feet and her thoughts carried her, the more convinced she became that Olga Swenson had chosen well when the widow decided to confide in Liz.

But Liz’s confidence was in for a blow.

Night fell as Liz came to the edge of the woodland and approached the western gate leading into the topiary garden. Relieved the gate was not chained shut, Liz took comfort in knowing that beyond the rhododendrons, the scene would open up until she reached the Pinetum. Then, even when the walk darkened amid the collection of conifers, she would be closer to the well-lit college pathways and her car.

Rounding the rhododendrons, she looked ahead eagerly towards the balustrade-bounded walkway.

Much brighter.

Bright enough to reveal the silhouette of a Doberman pinscher, posed in an unmistakably challenging stance.

Liz froze in her tracks. Then, very slowly, she turned to retrace her steps.

The Doberman advanced.

She halted.

So did the dog.

With her back to the watchdog, Liz listened for its approach. The only sound in the moonless night was that made by the reporter’s own rapid breathing.

Wasn’t it always said dogs can sense your fear? And that attack dogs were more likely to strike if they smelled your cowardice?

Liz took in a few long breaths through her nose, exhaling each from her mouth. Perhaps she’d slowed her breathing. But her heart did not stop pounding. Surely she must be broadcasting her terror.

Liz felt a breeze on her face. It was blowing from the direction of the open space. Good. Her scent would not be reaching the dog. But that was small comfort when she had no idea if the dog had continued to approach her.

She had to know if the Doberman had gotten closer. Slowly, she turned her head and then her shoulders, too.

She saw the dog had held its place, but now that she moved, he did, too. Straight toward her.

Haunches forward, the dog took several steps. The movements were slow, precise, light-footed.

Liz took a few leaden steps away from the animal.

The hound halved the distance between them.

There was nothing to do but test one remaining hope. The dog might stop following her if she crossed the property line. Steadily and slowly, Liz covered the remaining few yards to the gate and passed through it.

Then Liz’s breath was not the only noise in the night. She heard the short pants of the Doberman, too.

Liz knew it would be madness to strike out into the dark woods with the dog on her heels. At least on the Hightower Estate there was the hope of someone hearing her if she screamed. So, slowly bringing her forearm across her chest in case she had to protect her face, Liz turned and, to steady herself, softly muttered the first song that came to mind.

“God rest ye merry gentleman, let nothing you dismay. . . ”

Then, one snow-muffled step at a time, she rounded the rhododendrons.

At first, the dog was nowhere to be seen. Then she spotted him in the fantastic landscape, standing, ears pointed toward her, in front of a corkscrew-shaped topiary. Placing front paws lightly on the snow, he advanced, sniffing. In his new location, the breeze would blow Liz’s odor of fear straight to him.

The dog made a sudden change in posture.

Was he teasing her before attacking? The damnable beast seemed to romp in her direction, circling a gumdrop-shaped conifer before flying down the hillside straight towards Liz.

Liz lifted her arm in front of her throat. But the dog did not leap at her. Instead he circled round and round Liz’s statue-still form and finally sat down in front of her. Louder than her heaving breathing, more steady than her throbbing heartbeat, there was another sound.

Flop, flop, flop, flop.

A stubbed tail beating against the tightly trimmed branches of a topiary shrub.

Amazed, Liz did not question the change in her circumstances. As she walked along the balustrade through the Pinetum and out the eastern gate of the Hightower property, the Doberman trotted at her side like her own protector. At the gate, the dog halted and sat watching her protectively until Liz crossed the arched stone bridge that led, at last, to the lamp-lit campus walkway.

In her car, Liz turned up her heater until the windows steamed over and her teeth stopped chattering. Then she removed her jacket. Pulling her arm out of a sleeve, she found a thin, nearly threadbare scarf that was not her own. It must have gotten caught there when her jacket was hung on a hook in the Swenson mudroom. Holding it to her face, she breathed in the subtle scent of another human, an odor that must have saved her life.

Liz turned on the defroster and, when the windshield cleared, pulled her car out of the faculty club parking lot. It felt as though an entire evening had passed, but it was only 5:50 p.m. She should have called in to the newsroom much earlier to report what she was up to, and now it looked like she would be late for her meeting with Cormac Kinnaird, too. With the faculty club closed, she drove to Wellesley Center to find a phone booth.

“Pissed.”

That was how Dermott McCann described himself at learning Liz had no story for him. When he gave her a piece of his mind about the late call-in, she gave him a piece of hers.

“Why don’t you arm your reporters with up-to-date technology? Have you heard of a cell phone?”

“Some reporters take pride in being up to date for their own sakes. Christ, how do you have a personal life without owning a cell phone these days? You know we’d pay for calls you make for us, if you submit the receipt.”

“But not for the basic bill or the phone itself. Thanks a lot!”

“You got a chip on your shoulder?”

“More than that. If I’d had a cell phone an hour ago, I might have been spared a threatening encounter with a Doberman!”

“Yeah, yeah. A likely story.”

Hoping he’d be lingering over his banjo at Tir Na Nog, Liz left Kinnaird a phone message. Saying she’d been unavoidably delayed, she asked the doctor to phone her at Gravesend Street, where she planned to stop and change her clothes before heading to the Somerville pub.

By the time she arrived in her Pike-side abode, Liz was so beat that she would have greeted with relief a message from Kinnaird postponing their encounter. She wanted nothing more than a very hot shower and an equally steaming bowl of soup. She treated herself to one after the other, and then fell into bed. It was just 7:10.

At 9:30, the ringing telephone startled her awake. It was her mother calling from Mexico, where she and her partner were spending the winter in his Airstream trailer.

“I was gearing up to leave you a voice-mail message, Liz,” she said. “I thought you’d be out on the town or with friends the Friday before Christmas.”

Liz gave her a nutshell account of the story she was covering and told her mother how frustrated she was about the weekend falling just when she needed a business day to follow a great lead.

“You don’t need a business day to take a ride in a New York City taxi. Why don’t you go down to the city and follow up on that taxi receipt you found? You could stay with Aunt Janice and have a good laugh while you’re at it.”

“I thought she was in England this time of year.”

“Not this Christmas. She had to stay in town to play an extra on a soap opera.”

“At Christmas? Couldn’t she turn it down?”

“Normally she would. But she couldn’t resist playing the role of a jaded ballerina-turned-dance critic, after spending so many years in the Radio City Music Hall corps de ballet herself. Of course, she’ll be missing your cousin and the grandchildren. It will do you both good to spend the weekend together.”

“It’s true the Banner will never send me to New York to follow up on that taxi receipt.”

“Then go for it! In fact, I’ll fund the train fare as an extra Christmas present. What does it cost, eighty-some dollars each way? Charge it and I’ll send a check you can pay the bill with. Where will you be on Christmas? Are you scheduled to work? Or has a special someone entered your life?”

“I volunteered to work the holiday. I figured, when a special someone does come along, the Banner’ll owe me the day off. As it turns out, it may give me the edge on the Johansson story. After all, Mom, this isn’t a story about aggressive people stealing parking spots from one another at the mall. A woman’s life may hang in the balance here.”

“You’re too good. The paper’s lucky to have you. Don’t work too hard, OK? I’ll give you a call on Christmas.”

Enlivened by the nap and, after she phoned her, by Janice’s delight at the idea of having a pre-Christmas guest, Liz arranged for train tickets and packed her bags. She also wrapped up a bottle of Pol Roger to present to her aunt and hand-washed a few pieces of clothing. Recalling Cormac Kinnaird’s appealingly boyish appearance while banjo playing, Liz changed into black velvet pants and a forest-green velvet tunic. The outfit seemed a bit dressier than others she had observed in Irish pubs, but it was one of the few clothing combinations she had neither packed for New York City nor left dripping on her clothes drying rack. And the truth was, she didn’t mind standing out just a little bit in the eyes of Dr. Kinnaird. So, Liz applied some make-up with care, threw on a hooded jacket and dry boots, and went out into the night again to make her way to Tir Na Nog.

At the door of her Mercury Tracer, in the chill of the December night, Liz remembered to return to her house to pick up the Ziploc bag containing the lipstick and hair elastic. At the same time, she remembered Dr. Kinnaird’s self-important posturing at the Worcester Public Library, and the gravity of her investigation, and revised her hopes for the evening.

It was a good thing Liz had downsized her expectations, since the tiny Tir Na Nog pub did not have music on the menu that night. While his banjo lay unplayed on one end of his table, Kinnaird looked ill at ease as Liz greeted him. Feeling overdressed, she hesitated to remove her coat. When she did, Kinnaird studiously registered no reaction.

“It’s charming,” she said of the bar’s interior decorating, which blended Irish and Bostonian elements into one harmonious whole. The atmosphere of the small pub was intimate, too, but that dimension seemed lost on Kinnaird. She ordered Chardonnay and sat in silence until her drink was delivered.

Liz took the opportunity to study her surroundings further. The brick walls were hung with an eclectic mix of items, including a blackboard listing bands scheduled to perform there, a circular ship’s life preserver, and a vanity license plate bearing the word FIDDLE.

“Usually, this place oozes music,” Kinnaird said morosely. Presumably because he was not playing that night, he was drinking a pint of Harp.

“Maybe you should play something for us. You have your banjo.”

“I’m not at a level to perform solo. I’m a rank beginner,” Kinnaird admitted, killing that idea.

Fortunately, there was business to attend to. Liz pulled out her Ziploc bag and turned it over to her companion, if “companion” he could be called.

“Ellen’s,” she said.

“Ah, indeed,” he replied. “At last, one is privy to some physical evidence.”

“To be sure,” Liz heard herself say. “I wonder if his formality is contagious?” she asked herself.

“Of course, I already have the poinsettias.”

“Have they revealed anything helpful?”

“Two different blood types. Hers, as reported in the press. And that of another person, as yet unidentified, of course.”

“Blood type?”

“B-negative. Uncommon.”

“Uncommonly good.”

“Let us hope. But it’s useless without additional evidence with which to match it.”

“I hope we’ve got that here,” Liz said, glancing at the Ziploc bag.

Kinnaird made no comment.

“And how shall you be spending the holidays?” she said, noting as she did so that it was unlike her to use the word shall.

“That remains to be seen,” Kinnaird replied cryptically. “And you? How shall you spend your time off?”

“Not ‘off.’ I shall have to echo you,” Liz said. “‘That remains to be seen.’”

“You’ve no plans? I’m surprised.”

“Oh, I’ve got plans, all right. I just don’t know the specifics. I’ll be on assignment for the Banner, covering whatever comes up: incendiary Christmas trees, kids choking on small toy parts, that sort of thing, I suppose. I hope there will be time to find fruitful developments in the Johansson case.”

“Ah, there we are in accord,” Kinnaird said.

Accordingly, shall we relax our vocabulary a bit? Liz thought but did not say aloud. Instead, she laid her right hand palm-up on the table and said nothing.

Cormac Kinnaird picked up her hand and pressed his lips to it.

Since he said nothing at all after that gesture, Liz dearly wished—as probably he did, too—that there had been some music playing. But there was no tune to be heard. So Liz picked up her new friend’s left hand and gently kissed the calluses on the tips of each finger.

“Tir Na Nog is a kind of Celtic paradise, you know,” he said.

“I know it now,” she replied. When he wouldn’t meet her eyes, she added, “I’m off to Manhattan before dawn tomorrow, so I must get some rest. You had better find yourself a pub where music is playing.”

Looking over her shoulder as she left Tir Na Nog, Liz saw the man who had kissed her palm pick up the plastic bag of evidence and his Irish tenor banjo with equal enthusiasm, without allowing his striking blue eyes to follow her out the door.

Remembering her encounter with the Doberman, simple joy at being alive and unscathed almost overcame Liz’s perplexity at the doctor’s behavior and her own impulsiveness. As soon as she reached Gravesend Street, she settled in for a short winter’s nap, knowing she would have to rise at 4:45 a.m. in order to catch her train.