Front Page Teaser

Chapter 14

Liz popped open her umbrella to walk back to her car, crossing the street this time to get a closer look at shop windows on the other side. They were just as varied and just as interesting. Here, a carpet shop loaded with the “Remnants and Mill Ends” its sign promised was neighbor to a Portuguese fish market and a toy emporium calling itself Godzilla Toyshop. A few doors down, Liz came upon the Globetrotter’s Music Shop, with a window advertisement promising, “International Instruments Our Specialty.”

Here was a case of truth in advertising. The walls reaching up to high ceilings were hung with drums of every description, many of them made of skins stretched over huge, hollowed-out gourds. There were also maraca-like gourds on handles, and guitars, balalaikas, lutes, ukuleles, and banjos.

“Do you carry strings for Irish tenor banjos?” Liz asked the clerk and was pleased when he pulled four cellophane packets, each containing a different string, from a well-organized drawer.

After paying the clerk, she returned to her car and drove through very sluggish shopping traffic to the newsroom. She arrived early enough to open a number of small gifts on her desk, adding several small chocolates she found there to her stash in the zipped coconut.

Then, after fetching a cup of coffee and sandwich from the cafeteria downstairs—egg salad, not chicken or turkey—she started to write her story about the turkey heist. Lines were not up, and she did not know how much space she’d be given, so she took special care to keep the essentials at the top of the story.

“It was a case of duck, duck, goose—and 24 turkeys, too—when a Santa-suit–clad scamster lifted 27 fresh-killed birds from Torrentino’s Poultry Place in East Cambridge yesterday,” Liz wrote.

“According to butcher and shop owner Luigi Torrentino, 68, his shop clerk Lucarno Fino, 15, was taken in by the Santa look-alike’s story that he was picking up the fresh-killed fowl for charity. Torrentino said the teen did not verify with him that the poultry was intended as a charitable donation.

“Detective Matt Hurley characterized the Christmas Eve day chicken heist as a scam. ‘The kid did chicken (expletive) to prevent it, though,’ Hurley said, referring to Fino. ‘In fact, he helped load the birds into the van they were taken away in. He actually helped the birds fly the coop,’ Hurley added. ‘And here’s the kicker. After all that, he couldn’t describe the vehicle!’ Hurley said.”

Liz pressed the H&J button on her keyboard and watched the machine lay out her story in a long column. The ATEX machine measured the piece, too. 3.6 inches. Probably just about right for the gravity of the crime.

Dermott McCann came by her desk, and said, “What have you got for me, Higgins? I need to know for the meeting.”

Liz gave him a nutshell summary. Then she made her way to the library to read her e-mail while McCann determined story sizes and placement in the afternoon meeting. Besides more spam messages reading “Blister,” there were Christmas messages from her mother, Aunt Janice, and several colleagues and friends. Nothing new from Cormac Kinnaird. Annoyed at how much it mattered to her, Liz knew she needed to separate her need for his professional expertise from her personal feelings for him. Although she would have preferred to phone him, in the hope that the tone of his voice would help her to read his mood, she knew she had to contact him regarding the Johansson case, so she tapped out an e-mail message on the keyboard: “Dear Cormac, I would very much like to connect with you regarding professional matters—and especially to deliver a little something to put under your Christmas tree. I hope you will get in touch with me as soon as it is convenient. With warm gratitude for the gorgeous bouquet, I wish you a Merry Christmas. Liz.”

After replying to a few family messages, Liz returned to her desk and saw the light blinking on her phone. Before picking it up, she logged onto ATEX and found her chicken heist piece was just the right length. She also read, with gratitude, the words “File and fly rule in effect. Merry XMAS.” After sending her story into the system, she dialed up her voice-mail messages and found she’d just missed a call from her mother and another one from Cormac.

“It’s Cormac,” the doctor said on her voice mail. “It’s a business matter. You can catch me on this line until around six-thirty, when I’ll be meeting some people at Tir Na Nog. Come to think of it, you can catch me there, too, in the evening.”

Liz looked at the clock. It was 6:20. But when she phoned Cormac, he did not pick up. Unprepared for this, she left an awkward but honest message.

“I’m disappointed not to find you in, Cormac,” she said. “And I feel unsure if I should take your time for business on Christmas Eve. Really, I don’t know what to do. I’ll give this all some thought during my drive and hope, whether I see you or not tonight, you have a wonderful Christmas.”

It might be a toss-up as to whether Liz should go to the Irish bar, but she was certain of one thing. If she did go out, there was no way this bird would turn up at a Christmas Eve gathering in the same clothes she’d worn to cover the fresh-killed poultry scam. So she got on the Pike and headed back to Gravesend Street.

Along the way, she saw her name and the Christmas greeting in lights again on the dark side of her billboard. This made her remember she hadn’t phoned Tom to thank him for his surprise. After turning on her Christmas tree lights, phoning him was the first thing she did when she arrived home.

But Tom was not in. And the message on his answering machine gave her pause. “We’re out for Christmas Eve, but please leave a message,” a woman’s recorded voice said. “And Merry Christmas to all!” Tom’s voice added.

“We?” Liz almost said aloud. She had been under the impression that Tom lived alone. Who was this woman? Surprised again by unexpected information in an answering machine message, she said only, “Merry Christmas to you, too,” and hung up without adding the words she had expected to say: “And thank you for last night.”

Then she sank into her chair, pulled up the purple and white afghan and gazed at her tree. There remained one more gift under it. Getting up to examine it, she saw that the paper on it was tattered and torn. And when she opened it, she realized why: It was a catnip mouse for Prudence. Apparently, the cat had tried and failed to open it.

What’s a guy with a girlfriend doing providing treats to another woman and to her cat? Liz wondered. Throwing the mouse to Prudence, she decided not to spend Christmas Eve alone, even if it might mean awkwardness with Cormac. Using the remaining red tissue paper, she wrapped up the four guitar strings in separate pieces of paper, tied them together in a flat stack with gold ribbon, and poured herself a glass of Chardonnay.

Then she went through her closet and dresser in frustration. Even at age thirty-two, it was possible to be plunged into a high-school moment when challenged to pick out an outfit intended to make a good impression on a member of the opposite sex. Casual dress had been the norm at the Green Briar and Tir Na Nog, but Liz had no idea if this would be the case on Christmas Eve. Too bad she had already worn her forest green velvet tunic to one of her two meetings with Cormac. While its fabric was soft and luxurious, the color did not stand out as loud or dressy. Finally, Liz decided to forget about fitting into the crowd and to put on her mint-green, shot silk tunic-length jacket over black velvet leggings. It was her favorite outfit for festive occasions, and it was clean, so it would just have to do.

Liz needn’t have worried about her fashion choice. When she wedged her way into the crowd that packed Tir Na Nog, she found it was impossible to stand back and get a full-figure look at anyone. In the small room, made warm with body heat and cigarette smoke, she was glad she had opted for the silk instead of a sweater.

It took some doing to find Cormac, but, predictably, he was seated at a table near the musicians. Less predictably, he was leaning forward in animated conversation with a red-headed woman. The eye contact he made with her beat any he’d ever made with Liz. The pair looked like a couple. Seeing this, Liz went to the bar and bought her own drink, another glass of Chardonnay. As she turned to find a seat, she found Cormac standing behind her.

“I would have bought you that,” he said.

“Thank you, but I didn’t want to interrupt your conversation.”

“It’s a reel,” Cormac said, referring to a lively tune filling the air.

“Aren’t you playing tonight?”

“Not with this group. They’re so much more advanced than I am. I left my banjo at home. But I’ll learn a little something by listening. Come on over, and I’ll introduce you to Maggie,” he added.

The redhead gave Liz as thorough a looking over as could be accomplished in the crowded place. Then, placing one hand proprietarily on Cormac’s, she spread the fingers of the other and ran them through her gorgeous mane of straight, copper-colored hair, lifting her locks so that they fell fabulously again to her shoulders. The gesture—so reminiscent of Liz’s own movement when she was stressed or excited—made the reporter feel intensely uncomfortable. So did the realization that Cormac apparently had a taste for women with red-toned hair. The effect of Maggie’s movement seemed not to have been lost on Cormac, who could hardly take his eyes off her, even as she turned her back on him and stepped forward to speak to one of the musicians.

“I’m ready whenever you are,” Liz heard her say.

The reel spun on for some minutes. But after it was through, Maggie turned and faced the crowd. The musicians lay down their instruments and gave her their attention as, closing her striking green eyes, Maggie lifted her voice to sing:

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 Banner and the World and made haste to get home, too.

Back at Gravesend Street, she turned on her Christmas tree lights, lit her fireplace, and whipped up a soufflé. 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 Banner’s front page was taken up with an old engraving of Santa Claus and a printing of the poem The Night Before Christmas. Headed “FAKE ST. NICK HAS KNACK FOR NICKING,” Liz’s story made Page Fifteen. It was accompanied by a photo of the hapless Lucarno, looking thoroughly perplexed, at the police station. The caption read, “BIRD-BRAINED poultry clerk admits aiding Santa look-a-like in Christmas Eve turkey heist.”

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 Banner, Liz went to her desk and took out her envelopes of photos, leafing through them to find the extra photo DeZona had taken of the Johansson kitchen. Evidently, DeZona had climbed on something—perhaps a kitchen step stool—to fire his second kitchen shot, since this photo offered a view into the sink. Sitting in the perfectly clean, stainless steel sink was a delicately patterned, bone china teacup. Liz turned to the living room photo she had recently shown to Faisal Al-Turkait. There was the matching teacup, half-filled with liquid, resting on a saucer. Using a magnifying glass, Liz examined both teacups bearing a design of tiny blue blossoms.

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 soufflé out of her oven. She sliced a tomato over a few spinach leaves, then cut into the soufflé, 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, Where in the world is Ellen Johansson? while watching the flickering light reflected from her fireplace as it danced across her ceiling.

New York City, December 16, 2000

Samir Hasan was at a loss. Not dressed adequately for dining in the Windows on the World restaurant, he pondered how he could keep his eye on the women there. Then, noticing another man in the elevator holding a plastic bag from the Gap, he asked him if the shop was located nearby.

“Turn right, out of the elevators,” the fellow said.

Fortunately, the sporty shop located on the World Trade Center’s ground floor did carry navy blazers. Along with a pair of new slacks, a pale blue shirt and tie, and a pair of sunglasses, the blazer would make him look both presentable and unfamiliar to his former taxi passenger. Hasan tried on the outfit, then, cursing the time it took to remove and purchase it, he returned to the dressing room and put on the new clothes again. The whole process took some twenty-four minutes. It took another six for him to reach the restaurant.

Luck was with him as a single businessman gave up a table just as Hasan arrived. But the maitre d’ was in no hurry to give him the uncleared table.

“I am in such a haste,” Hasan explained. “I will be closing a business deal shortly, but with the jet lag and no good meal since I departed London, I am ravishing,” he added earnestly, winning a smile at last from the maitre d’.

Shown to the seat, Hasan was asked if he preferred the buffet or the à la carte menu. Following the waiter’s outstretched hand pointing in the direction of a large buffet spread, the cabbie hardly dared believe his luck. There he saw the pale-haired woman approach the sumptuous spread. A moment later, as her friend joined her, Hasan was also at her side, serving himself fruit salad while overhearing the pair’s enthusiastic chatter.

“Isn’t it something, after all these years of being pen pals, to find out how many tastes we share?” the Middle Eastern woman said.

“I can’t get over it!” the fair woman enthused. “Now, tell me Nadia, what is the word for this?” She pointed to a coffee urn.

No speaker of the Arabic language would be at a loss for such a word. Riveted, Hasan had to remind himself to act interested in the buffet food while he listened for more. He picked up a roll and a pat of butter.

“I know that’s mishmish, but how about these berries?” the fair woman said, pointing to a tray of fresh strawberries.

“I’m not sure of the word for them. We call a wild berry tukki but these look like they are cultivated.”

“Tukki. What a cute word! And easy to remember, too. It sounds a little bit familiar, but I can’t figure out where I’ve heard it.”

Was it possible this shaqra did not understand his language after all? That her knowledge of Arabic was limited to a few phrases she had learned to say when greeting a pen friend? Could it be she not only did not understand but had barely found memorable the code words he should never have discussed over his two-way radio?

Shaken, the cabdriver spilled coffee down the front of his new trousers. When the shaqra turned to help him, he made a little bow and begged her not to worry. When she realized the spill was in the groin and leg area, she seemed glad to move away while a male waiter stepped in to assist.

Hasan was overcome with dismay. Once a mere messenger of code words in a larger scheme, the full implications of which he was not worthy to know, he now found himself asked to eliminate an innocent woman. He knew he had given out the woman’s location. If he did not do the deed himself, it was only a matter of time until Fa’ud’s associates came to help him “take care of” her. Almost paralyzed with panic, he cast about mentally for some solution. Then it came to him. The only thing to do was to empty the place urgently. That might be done by means of a minor fire. Playing up his recently established awkwardness, he managed to dump over a chafing dish full of hot rolls. As they rolled onto the floor, paper doilies running the length of the buffet table burst into fire, ignited by the blue flame of the Sterno can. It was hardly a major conflagration, but nonetheless, it was enough to set off shrieking fire alarms and sprinklers forcing diners to flee the room.

In the exodus, Hasan saw the fair woman become separated from her friend, as the latter was unable to get on the same elevator with her. The friend also did not make it onto the second elevator, which Hasan was able to catch. During the long descent to the lobby, Hasan could only hope he would arrive in time to find the lady. Meanwhile, he prayed to Allah to help him overcome the emasculating inclination to help the woman flee from the danger she was in.

When Hasan finally arrived in the lobby of the World Trade Center, he saw one of Fa’ud’s protégés lurking beside a potted palm. But Hasan’s trendy Gap outfit was not what the operative was looking for. In addition, the arrival of firemen on the scene added to the chaos.

A fireman had already taken Ellen firmly by the arm and maneuvered her away from the elevator bay. So when Hasan gripped her shoulder and, with a hand at the small of her back, urged her forward briskly, she was not entirely surprised.

“This way, ma’am, this way,” he said keeping his face out of sight over her shoulder, as emergency personnel handled other confused individuals similarly. Ellen cried out when he threw open a door and thrust her into a janitor’s closet, but, in the confusion, no one seemed to notice. With the door shut, Hasan turned her to face him and said, “Allah help us. I have made a grievous mistake.”