My mother settled into a chair and sighed. “Esther dear, just what are you talking about?”
“Frana has run off with a man.” One word, almost: “Franahasrunoffwithaman.” She slowed down, breathed in, repeated the line. “Frana has run off with a man.”
“Good God.” My mother glanced at Fannie. “What is this all about?”
Fannie was puzzled. “Are you sure? I thought she was still seeing that football player, you know, the good looking…”
“What did you hear?” I broke in.
Esther took a couple of deep breaths. “Well, everyone knew she was secretly seeing an older man. I mean, her friends talked. There were rumors it was some drummer staying at the Sherman House. She was seen spending time around there…”
“But who?” From Fannie, interrupting.
“When did this happen?” I touched Esther on the sleeve.
“I bet it’s that Calvin Steiner,” my mother said. “Forty-odd years old, a drinker, that one, and always his eyes on the young girls. He comes into My Store, huffing and puffing, and if a farm girl is sifting through the pottery, he loses his train of thought and sputters like an old fool. Trying to sell me those mousetraps that wouldn’t so much as catch an elephant passing by…”
“Was it him?” I demanded.
“No one knows. But I heard that the afternoon train leaving for Milwaukee had the usual bunch of drummers, and one man was accompanied by a young girl who hid her face.” Esther let the drama settle on the porch.
“So how do you know it was Frana?” I wondered.
“Well, she’s disappeared. When her uncle went to get her at the high school this afternoon, she was gone. She’d left early. She snuck out, it seems. She wasn’t there.”
“But that’s impossible.” I knew how severely the high school was run. If Frana’s uncle was scheduled to collect her at school’s end, there was no way Principal Jones or Vice-Principal Timm would allow her to simply stroll out, especially not with Miss Hepplewhyte, that authoritarian sentry, guarding the doors. It was not done.
“She lied, I guess.”
“How did you learn this?”
“I was with my father at Pettibone’s just now, and Mollie heard it from Kathe Schmidt, who said Chief Stone had been called to the high school. He was out of town but is just back and…”
“What’s happening now?” Impatient, my words rushed.
“Well, everyone is rushing there. To the high school. The chief even called the teachers back for a meeting. Right now. Frana’s uncle’s raising Cain, it seems. He’s at the school yelling and cursing. He refused to leave the building. And…”
We all started to talk at once, speculating, guessing, my mother tsking and talking about wayward girls, too pretty for their own good. She glared at the baffled Fannie, who, meeting our mother’s iron gaze, was stupefied, homebody that she certainly was. Julia Ferber, daughter of fatalistic East European sensibility, always expected disaster, rainy days on her already-dark parade, flooding her beleaguered soul. Me, the younger daughter, already had defied her, becoming the subject of wagging town tongues. Fannie, pretty as a daisy, a fluttering girl, susceptible to flattery, well, that girl needed watching. My mother was a worried mother hen.
Esther then joined the noisy chorus and our four voices were at counterpoint: “Imagine…her poor family…didn’t you just…I knew something like this would happen…just too pretty…traveling salesmen, you know how…not trusted…roving eyes…a girl too man crazy…an actress, you say?…glory be to God…because she had a part in some high school production?. too pretty…I always say a young girl…not safe any more…You’d think…I think…I think…I really think…think…”
In the swelling babble of squawking, overlapping voices my father spoke, and, like a factory siren blast, there was sudden silence on the porch. We turned to him.
“What?” My mother was peevish. I realized it was the first word she’d spoken to him since the afternoon visit from Dr. Cooper.
“She’s just a little girl.” His voice was filled with sadness.
Chapter Seven
Esther and I wanted to rush downtown. Ignoring my mother (“Ed, this is not your business”), we headed toward the high school where we spotted Amos Moss, the deputy chief, huffing along in huge strides, headed up the stairs. We caught up with him as he opened the front door.
Amos Moss was the number-two man in a town that sustained two full-time law officers and a receptionist, an old widow named Tessa Monger. Three part-time constables filled the ranks. Occasionally, I stopped at the police station, though Byron Beveridge regularly covered that beat. I never cared for such visits. No one there took me seriously. Tessa was the least offensive, a shaky, twitchy woman always on the verge of crying, though she wore a constant smile. She thanked everyone for stopping in, as if it were a church social, but she rarely provided information. Deputy Amos Moss was an hour away from being the town idiot-a tobacco-chomping bungler in his forties, overflowing in a stained shirt and pants, his badge always lopsided. He spent his days going in the wrong direction.
Chief of Police Caleb Stone, however, was a different cut of cloth, a man as stringy as a long bean, with a prominent jaw, a volatile temper, and a persistent belief in fair play. I considered him an enigma, largely because he was so notoriously close-mouthed. He might be a clever man, this taciturn sheriff, but with his stony reserve he was hard to read. An elder in the First Congregational Church, he was respectability itself.
Appleton was so lazy and peaceful a town that the chief and deputy spent their days wrestling with trespassing, wandering cows and sheep, barroom brawls, neighborhood spats. The horse-drawn patrol wagon hauled drunken souls to the city lockup, baby-faced Horace Grove at the reins. At times, staring into the wagon, I saw grimy, stone-faced Oneida Indians, drunk on corn mash illegally sold to them, deadened men headed for lockup where, according to Byron Beveridge’s report in the Crescent, they spent the night playing euchre.
No, the truth of the matter was that the police had little to do in town, most days. How many times could a vagrant goat trespass in Mrs. Meeson’s flowerbed? Read the Crescent or the Post. Nothing but baseball statistics and at-home socials.
Which probably explained why both Chief Caleb Stone and Deputy Amos Moss were at the high school now, two hours after Frana Lempke’s disappearance.
Amos Moss stopped short and I nearly collided with him. “Going somewheres, ladies?”
“I’m a reporter for the Crescent, as you know, Mr. Moss.”
“This ain’t news.”
Esther leaned into Amos, her eyes flashing. “We’re good friends of Frana, Mr. Moss. We were with her…”
He nodded. I sighed. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Girl reporters seemed to have meager currency in this town. Esther’s fluttery eyelids and pretty face had more authority with the simpleton law.
Chief Caleb Stone had been summoned by Principal Jones, who, frustrated by the bizarre disappearance and verbally assailed by Christ Lempke, had asked teachers to remain behind. Some returned to the school from their homes. I’d not known what to expect, but surely not this gathering. Sitting in rows in the auditorium, the fifteen or so teachers and staff looked at one another, stupefied.
The chief had been talking to the principal down in front and glanced up at me. “Newsworthy?” A trace of sardonic smile. Once or twice as I passed by him on College Avenue, he’d greeted me with similar wry amusement. Even this-this situation, whatever it was-seemed to bring his sarcasm.
“So,” he began, “we have a young lady who stepped out of class and into thin air.”
Esther and I slipped into seats at the back of the auditorium.
I heard grunting. Frana’s uncle, Christ Lempke, was sitting apart, not in an auditorium chair but on a bench, his back against the wall, hunched over.