“You like the boyfriend?” I raise my eyebrows and pretend to be shocked. “What would your adorable Stephen say-”
“Clam rolls?” The waitress interrupts, eyeing Franklin first. “Extra tartar, extra lettuce, extra onion rings? Coke?”
Franklin nods. She hands me the light mayo, no fries and Diet Coke. Damn Franklin and his cooperative metabolism.
He nibbles a few onion rings, meticulously peeling the batter-dipped strips away from one another and dipping each in a puddle of ketchup. “So,” he says. “You scored at the library?”
My clam roll is oozing mayonnaise. So much for “light.” I try to tuck escaping clam shards back into the buttered, toasted hot dog bun while relating my encounter with Marybeth Gallagher, Swampscott High’s enduring librarian and uncompromising guardian of her well-ordered domain.
“She was not happy to see me,” I say, holding the clam roll in one hand and my napkin in the other. I’m alternating taking bites and dabbing bready morsels from my lipstick. “Told me in no uncertain terms I was trespassing and it was only because she had seen me on TV that she didn’t call security. I explained we were trying to help Dorinda Keeler. Sweeney. I could tell she was curious, you know? But even then, no way she was going to let me stick around. She actually took me by the elbow, propelled me to the door, and then she-kind of begrudgingly-let on that she did remember Dorinda. And her ‘beau’ as she called him, the star of the senior play, Colby Carl Hardesty.”
I sit up straighter and flutter my eyelashes, mimicking the librarian’s dramatic intonation and Down East accent. “‘CC, just like Romeo, was every girl’s dream and every mother’s nightmare.’” I smile, myself again. “Muthah’s nightmayeh, I love it. Then she tossed me from the place faster than you could say no comment.”
“She loaned you the yearbook, though?” Franklin asks. His clam roll, extra tartar sauce and all, is not dripping. Somehow his clams are staying nicely inside their boundaries. Even Franklin’s food is neat. “Bring it out, girl.”
I wipe my hands on my pile of paper napkins and draw the Seagull from my tote bag. By now I know exactly what picture to show him. “‘Up Where We Belong’” was the prom theme, can you believe it?”
Holding the yearbook with both hands, I turn it so Franklin can see, then point to each picture. “That’s Dorinda. That’s the CC person, her ‘beau.’ Look at that updo. And the tiara? I like her better with the sweatshirt look. The one in my phone snapshot.”
Frowning briefly, I stare at the hauntingly dated photograph, feeling the wrinkle between my eyebrows nestle itself in a little more permanently. My toe starts to tap. I slowly push my plate of congealing clam roll remains out of the way.
“You know,” I say, “she has that prommy dress, and the tiara and those banana curls. And no one looks like themselves at the prom, but-”
“Yeah, I’ve seen your prom picture, in the Farrah-wannabe getup,” Franklin says. “You looked like you had two heads. That clump of fake curls.” He smiles. “How much did that thing weigh? And your dress-was that a color found in nature? “
“It was 1978,” I say, my voice muffled because I’m digging into my purse. I need my cell phone. “It was cool.” There’s a beep as my phone powers up. More beeps as I click to my photos. I scroll down to the one I snapped of Dorinda. I was right.
“Check it out,” I say, holding my phone up next to the yearbook shot. “This picture of Dorinda I took? From the photo in the drawer? It’s not Dorinda.”
CHAPTER 7
Franklin and I look back and forth between the two pictures, my fuzzy out-of-focus phone snapshot and the elaborately unrealistic prom photo. They look similar, but they’re clearly two different teenagers. Either one could have grown up to be the person in the nursing home surveillance tape. Or neither.
“Maybe Dorinda had plastic surgery? For some reason? And that’s why she looks different on the tape? It drives me crazy that all we have are pictures-the yearbook, my phone, that video. What can you tell from a picture? We have got to talk to Dorinda in person.”
“Could be a friend of hers.” Franklin takes the yearbook and begins flipping the pages. “We could compare your phone photo with all the faces in the yearbook. See if we get a match.” He reaches for my phone. “Let’s see it.”
I stare at the cell phone’s tiny screen, then I flip it closed, shaking my head to get my thoughts in order. “Wait. Why do we have to know who’s in the picture? Let’s not lose sight of our goal here. I just found it in the drawer-it doesn’t have to be some big clue. We need to advance the story. Find out what happened to Ray Sweeney. Why Dorinda was convicted.”
Franklin hands me back the yearbook, then scoops up the last bit of ketchup with a shred of onion ring. Only he would eat onion rings with a fork. “She confessed,” he says, examining his final bite. “That’s why.”
“Remember what Rankin and Will said?” I ask, ignoring the confession remark. “Dorinda’s mother forced her to marry Ray Sweeney. Maybe she knows something? Is she still alive? She’d be-how old now?”
Franklin shrugs. “Well, if Dorinda is forty, her mother is probably at least, I don’t know, sixty. Or older.”
I put my elbows on the table, put my forehead in both hands, and look up at Franklin through my laced fingers. “My mother,” I say, remembering. “This is bleak. I can’t believe I forgot. I still have to go see her today.”
I check my watch, feeling smothered by the unrelenting deadline pressures of Mom, Josh, Penny, Dorinda. Will and Rankin, who want Dorinda out of prison. Oz, who wants to keep her in. And Susannah, who wants a ratings boost. And that’s not even counting myself.
“Let’s get this show on the road,” I say. “Since we’re in Swampscott, let’s track down some of the people in the yearbook photo with Dorie and CC. See what they can tell us.”
Franklin looks skeptical, one eyebrow raised. “How do we know they’re still around? Needle in a small-town haystack, I say. I suggest we go back to the station, check computer databases, run some names.” He waves a hand around the crowded restaurant. “We can’t just go up to people and say, hey yo, do you know anyone in these photos? Wish I’d brought my laptop.”
“Good old-fashioned reporting,” I say, shaking an admonishing finger. “Never fails. Hand over that Seagull. We don’t need no stinkin’ computers.”
MYRA MATZENBRENNER IS WEARING pink-and-green flip-flops with flamingoes on the grosgrain ribbons criss-crossing her tanned feet. Her toenails match the flamingos, and her fingernails match her toes. She flip-flops across her kitchen linoleum carrying three plastic flowered glasses of iced coffee, one in each hand and the third balanced in her fingers between them. The names of the prom princesses listed in the yearbook had been Donna Mill, Sheila Fortune, Bitsy Bergman, Sharon Freeland, and Linda Sue Matzenbrenner.
With a name like Matzenbrenner, who needs a computer? How many Matzenbrenners can there be in town? And if there’s more than one, I told Franklin, they’re certainly related. One quick flip through the local phone book brought us to prom princess Linda Sue’s home. Turns out, Prom Princess Linda is long gone. She has a husband and children and a house of her own outside Detroit, we’ve learned, but her mother’s memories have remained.
Myra Matzenbrenner slides pink napkins toward Franklin and me and sets down our coffees. Continuing her nonstop newsreel of Swampscott High history, she pulls up a white rattan stool and sits down to join us at the kitchen counter. Her living room is set with three card tables, each topped with a poof of carnations, a dish of chocolate-covered almonds, a stack of notepads and tiny pencils. It’s bridge club day at the Matzenbrenners’, but Myra has agreed to talk before the “gals” arrive.