Christ Lempke was nodding furiously.
Miss Hepplewhyte added, “I was surprised, in fact, because Mr. Lempke was actually early today.”
Christ Lempke stormed, “I am not a clock.”
“Perhaps she climbed out the window,” Amos Moss said, and everyone looked at him.
Principal Jones was shaking his head. “No, Zeke Puttman was pruning the bushes at the front of the school, was there all afternoon. I already talked to him. I think he’d have mentioned the sight of a young girl climbing out of the window, don’t you think? It was the first thing I thought of when I found the unlocked classroom.”
Caleb Stone actually yawned. I could read his mind. This was a lot of pettifogging about a wanton, hell-bent youngster who’d obviously schemed her way out of the school to rendezvous with some surreptitious lover. Doubtless she’d be back home by nightfall, punished by her stern father and whipped by the unrelenting Christ Lempke. At this point, the chief was going through the motions of being the marshal in town. It was either this curiously anemic incident or a walk to Lawe Road to warn Farmer Burnett-for the umpteenth time-to keep his sheep from bothering the grazing cattle of the widow Peters, who inhabited the hell-to-ruin cabin by the river.
“Well,” he drawled out the word, “she ain’t disappeared into thin air.”
So we’d come full circle: Frana, the ghost in the sky.
Mr. Timm decided to speak. “I might add that I was in that corridor at half-past the hour, more or less; and I did glance at my pocket watch”-he extracted the elaborate gold timepiece and flashed it to the onlookers-“and all was quiet. The empty classroom door was closed. Of course.”
“But not locked,” Chief Stone said.
“I didn’t check.” Suddenly Mr. Timm seemed flustered, as though he’d said too much. “I mean, why would I?”
“Of course.” The words escaped from the mouth of Mildred Dunne, who suddenly looked sheepish. “I only mean, well, we all were where we supposed to be. It’s a school. It must function…”
Mr. Timm showed a sliver of a smile. “Of course, Miss Dunne. Thank you, but I need no defense.”
Miss Dunne’s cheeks reddened.
Mr. McCaslin made a whistling noise, but a withering glance from Miss Hepplewhyte seemed to elicit an unintentional snicker from him. Mr. Jones looked none too happy with his staff. In fact, for a moment he looked teary-eyed, shaky.
Caleb Stone stuck the phony note into a breast pocket. “Seems to me this Frana girl is pretty clever. Somehow she worked her way out of the building, unseen. Someone batted an eyelid”-a sidelong glance at Miss Hepplewhyte, who was decidedly not happy-“and slipped out. Young children do those things. We can’t keep an eye on them all the time, you know. My own children, well…” He trailed off. “There is no other explanation. People don’t move through walls like Houdini.”
Outside, Esther stopped by the willow tree that brushed the building. “Why did Kathe Schmidt tell everybody about someone seeing Frana hopping a train with some drummer from the Sherman House?”
“I’ll tell you. Because she wanted that to be the truth. She’d like to see Frana really disappear from town.”
“Because of Jake Smuddie?”
“What else? Maybe Kathe told people that story because she knew Frana was up to something. Maybe Frana confided in her. Maybe, in fact, Frana did get on that train with a drummer. Maybe it’s not a rumor. But Chief Stone doubts she’s left town. Maybe Frana actually told her fair-weather friend that she planned on being on that train with a certain drummer. So Kathe just assumed it happened.”
Esther was wide-eyed. “And plans changed?”
“Maybe not. Frana could be in Milwaukee as we speak.”
“I can see Frana lying to her.”
“Because Kathe would believe her.”
“You know, Frana is up to something bad.”
“And Kathe is involved somehow. But I don’t understand how Frana mastered leaving the school unseen, not with Miss Hepplewhyte sitting there. Was that the only way she could get away from her uncle’s eagle eye?”
“She was a prisoner at home,” Esther insisted. “They put bars on her bedroom window. They watched her.”
“How’d you first hear of that?”
“Kathe was happy to tell me.”
“So she obviously saw her chance to flee only during school hours…”
Esther looked puzzled. “Why go to such lengths to get out of school unseen?”
“Meeting up with someone,” I concluded. “But she must have known there’d be a price to be paid later on…a beating, more confinement.”
“Unless she wasn’t planning on going home again.”
My mind was racing. “Then maybe she did get on that train.”
“The chief will find her.”
“But where is she? Frankly, I never thought she was that clever to do something like this.” I bit my lip. “Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless someone told her to do it.”
Esther nodded. “The lover.”
“Yes, the lover.”
“But where are they now?”
I clicked my tongue. “Not in a honeymoon Pullman suite, I’d hazard a guess.” A pause. “She’d-they’d-know everyone would look on that train right away.”
“So…”
“So she’d be hiding out in Appleton.”
“Until…”
“Until she can escape.”
“How?”
“Maybe a boat. Catching the Goodrich Line tonight at eight o’clock. From the dock on Sycamore.” In my mind I ran through the possible ways to escape Appleton.
“But the chief will be watching that boat, no?”
“I’d hope so.”
“So long as he doesn’t assign Amos Moss to keep an eye on it.”
“Then Frana can blithely sail up the Fox River, arm and arm with her paramour, waving goodbye to Appleton.”
“Paramour-I love that word,” Esther laughed.
We strolled casually back home, enjoying the idle speculation, gossiping, fascinated with our pretty little schoolmate who now had made herself the subject of discussion. Frana, the girl who never left home without a mirror, now talked of, sought, condemned, hiding somewhere, perhaps by the river or in the mill district. Somewhere. Perversely, I was wondering how I might make it an item in the Crescent, though I realized it was hardly news. Sam Ryan never allowed tidbits of scandal or idle sensation, no matter how scintillating, to pop up in his serious columns. Frana Lempke disappeared on a riverboat with Chester Smedjen, salesman from Minah Malleable Iron Fittings Company.
I was itching to jot down notes in my pad, to describe the scene at the high school.
“I feel sorry for her when she’s found,” Esther whispered.
“If she lets herself be found.”
The next morning I woke to the sound of rain beating down on the roof, and I snuggled under the covers. It would be a drifting Saturday, a chance for me to read the F. Marion Crawford romance I’d picked up at the library. For a moment, lying there, I thought of Frana Lempke, disappeared from town. Or had she? Downstairs Fannie was complaining about the rain. There would be no beating of carpets and Kathe Schmidt would simply not show up, most likely overjoyed at not having to help the Ferbers. I’d forgotten the day’s intended chore; I’d have to help, too, working with Kathe, doubtless the two of us ending up in a verbal skirmish.
By midday the rains were worse and my mother returned from My Store for dinner.