Robert B. Parker’s Revenge Tour

Sixty-One

She was waiting for me outside a lovely brick ranch that seemed to stretch out in all directions. Maybe there are homes as nice in New Ashford. I couldn’t imagine there were any nicer than this.

Elissa was small, with long, dark hair that reminded me of Susan Silverman’s, a nice figure, wearing white jeans that fit her quite well, a blue linen shirt rolled up to the elbows, cool-looking cork sandals.

“Wow, Jennifer Price,” she said after we’d shaken hands. “That’s a name that hasn’t come up lately.”

“I get a lot of that,” I said.

She walked me into a long, sunny living room, one that ended with a window looking onto a pretty spectacular view of what I now knew was Sheeps Heaven Mountain. I told her as quickly as I could why I was looking for information about Jennifer Price. Every time I told it, it sounded more complicated, as if I was trying to catch somebody up on Succession after they’d missed the first two seasons.

“But you think her death might somehow be connected to Melanie Joan Hall?” she said.

“Call it an operating theory,” I said.

Then she asked if I’d like some iced tea she’d just brewed up herself, mixed with homemade lemonade and pretty damn delicious if she did say so herself. She turned out to be right.

Elissa told things her way, almost in reverse. About how the first she’d ever heard of Jennifer Price was probably one night when she was in high school. She was watching TV in this very room with her mom, her dad dead of a heart attack by then, and one of those PSAs for suicide awareness came on. Her mom told Elissa about the young librarian who’d kept to herself, but whom Melinda Salzman, a member of the library board, had finally convinced to join her reading group.

It was, according to Elissa’s mother, the one place where she seemed to come alive.

“They met at the library one afternoon a week,” Elissa said. “But she didn’t show up one afternoon, and Mrs. Baum, the head librarian, said she hadn’t come to work that day, which never happened.”

Melinda Salzman, her daughter said, tried to call Jennifer Price’s house. No answer. Mrs. Baum said Jennifer had never missed a day of work. Melinda drove over to the house. Jennifer’s car was out front. The front door was open.

Melinda Salzman found her in the bathtub.

What she also found that day was a stroller and a crib.

“Mom said that until that moment, she had no idea that Jennifer Price was a mom,” Elissa said. “Neither did Mrs. Baum. But she kept to herself, and lived in what my mom said wasn’t much more than a cabin, on the edge of land up the mountain belonging to the Forestry Service. My mom said it was her way of having one foot in civilization and one in isolation.”

“Does anybody live there now?” I said.

“It was abandoned a long time ago,” she said, “when the Forestry Service reclaimed the land it was on. I think it’s remained empty, but I’ve heard some talk that they might use it for a new substation if the state ever finds money under the bed, because the house is largely intact.”

“Back to the baby,” I said. “Boy or girl?”

“Mom said there were no baby clothes,” Elissa said. “The only thing that she assumed was when Jennifer decided to end her life, she must have put the baby someplace safe, or up for adoption.”

“Where?” I said.

“Mom said it could have been a convent or orphanage or some foster program,” Elissa said. “But when the police checked her phone records after she died, there was nothing to indicate which one.”

“There was a baby,” I said. “I had no idea.”

“Sounds like no one did,” Elissa said. “Mom said that haunted her even more than everybody missing signs with her that maybe they wouldn’t have missed if they’d gotten to know her better.”

“Did they check back with Whitesboro College?” I said. “It’s where she’d gone to school.”

“Mrs. Baum told Mom that Jennifer hadn’t listed a college when she applied for the job,” Elissa said. “Just that she’d bowled her over with how much she loved and knew about books.”

“Mrs. Baum said something similar in the obit I read about Jennifer,” I said.

“It’s all so sad,” Elissa said. “How alone she must have been. My mom and Mrs. Baum packed up Jennifer’s belongings, her books and things, out of respect, Mom said, and stored them in a space the library’s always kept at U-Pack, over behind the Purple Pub. Just in case anybody ever came asking about her. Some long-lost relative maybe. It was mostly boxes filled with her books, and some writing journals, and her clothes.”

“Did the police think there might have been a suicide note in there?” I said.

“They said that people don’t hide notes like that,” Elissa said.

“What about the journals?” I said.

“My mom started to read one of them,” she said. “From college. It read like a short story, she said, but rang awfully true. Mom said it was so sad, she had to stop, without any urge to read further. She felt as if she were invading Jennifer’s privacy, even though that always sounded counterintuitive to me, because my mother was so regretful she hadn’t known more about her.”

“Did anybody ever show up to claim her stuff?” I said.

“Somebody did, as a matter of fact,” Elissa said. “Mrs. Baum told me. She was still at the library. A woman who said she was a friend of Jennifer’s came around asking about her. Mrs. Baum told her where Jennifer’s belongings were. She said the last she knew was that the woman was on her way over to collect them.”

“I’m guessing Mrs. Baum never mentioned the woman’s name?”

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” Elissa said. “Whoever that person was, she was already long gone by the time Mrs. Baum told my mom she’d even been in New Ashford.”

She sighed.

“How much pain must she have been in to give up a child?” Elissa said. “What do you suppose happened to it? I beg your pardon. To him, or her?”

I told her I was going to find out.

“You sound pretty certain,” she said.

“Call it another operating theory,” I said.

“Is there anybody still around who might possibly be able to help you?” she said.

I told her that just off the top of my head, I could think of one person.